This exciting collection tours virtual reality in both its current therapeutic forms and its potential to transform a wide range of medical and mental health-related fields. Extensive findings track the contributions of VR devices, systems, and methods to accurate assessment, evidence-based and client-centered treatment methods, and―as described in a stimulating discussion of virtual patient technologies―innovative clinical training. Immersive digital technologies are shown enhancing opportunities for patients to react to situations, therapists to process patients’ physiological responses, and scientists to have greater control over test conditions and access to results. Expert coverage details leading-edge applications of VR across a broad spectrum of psychological and neurocognitive conditions, including:
- Treating anxiety disorders and PTSD.
- Treating developmental and learning disorders, including Autism Spectrum Disorder,
- Assessment of and rehabilitation from stroke and traumatic brain injuries.
- Assessment and treatment of substance abuse.
- Assessment of deviant sexual interests.
- Treating obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.
- Augmenting learning skills for blind persons.
Readable and relevant, Virtual Reality for Psychological and Neurocognitive Interventions is an essential idea book for neuropsychologists, rehabilitation specialists (including physical, speech, vocational, and occupational therapists), and neurologists. Researchers across the behavioral and social sciences will find it a roadmap toward new and emerging areas of study.
Albert “Skip” Rizzo is a clinical psychologist and Director of Medical VR at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. He is also a Research Professor with the USC Dept. of Psychiatry and School of Gerontology. Over the last 25 years, Skip has conducted research on the design, development and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation across the domains of psychological, cognitive and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. This work has focused on PTSD, TBI, Autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and other clinical conditions. He has also driven an extensive research program on the use of intelligent virtual human agents for clinical training, healthcare information support, and clinical assessment. In spite of the diversity of these clinical R&D areas, the common thread that drives all of his work with digital technologies involves the study of how Virtual Reality simulations can be usefully applied to human healthcare beyond what’s possible with traditional 20th Century methods.
Stéphane Bouchard holds the Canada Research Chair in Clinical cyberpsychology and teaches psychotherapy and cyberpsychology at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Canada As a scientist-practitioner, his current research projects involve developing virtual environments to treat complex anxiety disorders and pathological gambling, leading randomized control trials on the efficacy of in virtuo exposure for mental health disorders, and conducting experimental studies to understand to why virtual reality is an effective treatment tool. Another prolific area of expertise is telepsychotherapy, where he conducts randomized control trials and processes studies on the efficacy of delivering cognitive-behavior therapy in videoconference. His research lab holds Psyche, the only six-sided total immersion virtual reality system dedicated to mental health research. He has received for more than 12 million dollars in research funding, has published more than 150 scientific articles and book chapters, delivered hundreds of scientific communications around the world and is actively collaborating with researchers from around the globe. He is also the president of Cliniques and Development In Virtuo, as company that distributes virtual environments to mental health professionals.
